On Wednesday I was out on the sidewalk in front of Coltivare at 4:47 p.m., waiting for the doors to open at 5. That’s not where you’d usually find me during the first few days of a restaurant’s life, since I think that it’s hard to tell much at that point.

But having seen Coltivare’s opening menu online, my brain was doing backflips. I just had to taste for myself. Right away.

I’m delighted I jumped the gun. Much of the food from chef Ryan Pera and crew tasted even better than I had imagined. If the kitchen follows this trajectory, Coltivare will challenge Da Marco and Osteria Mazzantini for honors as the best Italian restaurant in town.

What makes the food so special here is not just its very Italian simplicity, but its stirring sense of place. The shaved-fennel salad bursts with Houston’s winter citrus right now, and its soft avocado and wheels of ripe red jalapeño speak to our collective palate. Good olive oil and a multidimensional burst of aromatic Tellicherry peppercorns brings the whole thing to attention.

That salad works beautifully with a Gulf Coastal version of brandade: a “bycatch baccala” of the day’s outlier local fish (vermilion snapper, in this case) cured in salt and then whipped up with potatoes into a soft cloud topped with a bronzy crunch of fine bread crumbs. Its fish flavor was delicate but clear, and the textures, when scooped up with grilled country bread, just riveting.

I loved the purity and bite of raw local radishes to dip in soft cultured butter that had a beautiful milky bloom to it; followed by a dip into coarse Galveston sea salt. What a great starter or palate cleanser that is, and very much of the subtropical winter moment.

Swaggery-salty cotechino sausage, coarsely ground over at sister establishment Revival Market just a few blocks down White Oak, came to the table with a charry, blistered crust that made the casings snap hard. Underneath lay a cushion of the tiniest al dente lentils (a time-honored Italian accompaniment to this cooked pork sausage), underscored by a vivid swoop of pureed butternut squash — an ingenious seasonal swap-out for the traditional mashed potatoes or polenta.

Cotechino with lentils is considered to be a lucky New Year’s dish in Italy, so it’s a perfect fit for the first month of 2014. Even more so in tandem with a salad of pickled butternut squash strips, thin smooth shards interlaced with Brussels sprouts leaves, walnuts (not very Houston, but what the hell) and the tiniest, airiest croutons. That irresistible sharp savory note? A dark mince of roasted and balsamic-pickled shallot.

I was curious to try Coltivare’s take on garum, the ancient Roman fish sauce that was used not just as a seasoning but a mask for foods that were heading south. Not that it’s used that way here: cut with a briny edge of capers, the salty sauce gave a brisk lift to poached mussels. You’ll need some cushiony foccaccia bread from the wood-burning oven to sop up the garlicky juices.

That same foccaccia dough makes a base for Coltivare’s wood-fired pizzas, and the smidgen of sorghum molasses in the dough makes the blistered crown glaze up a shiny as glass. The surface textures fascinate, and a sparingly applied topping of thinly sliced Meyer lemons, goat cheese, olives and rosemary simply sang. I’m persuaded that Meyer lemons are a woefully underused pizza ingredient.

The pizza tweak yet to be made is an interior layer of uncooked dough that subverts the overall textural effect. I’m not sure what the fix is — a more pulled and thinned out central base? adjustments to oven temperature or cooking time? — but when the issue is resolved, this pizza will be magnificent. It goes against the serious Neapolitan current now in play to stand on its idiosyncratic own.

Of the pastas I tried, my favorite was an elemental spaghetti with parmesan cheese, black pepper and olive oil, all melded into a voluptuous whole by a spoonful or two of starchy pasta cooking water. It’s the quality of the ingredients that made this dish shine: the fragrance of the peppercorns; the bloom of the serious parmigiano; the roundness and fruit of the olive oil. Utterly simple and perfect.

Casarecce twists with oxtail sugo had a deep sherry-vinegar tang that interested me, but which seemed to need something to balance it, to talk back in some way. Fat little ricotta gnocchi got a hard pan-sear that left their undersides charry, and the bitterness of wilted mizuna leaves and sweet note of balsamic set them off.

This first time out, I passed on the big-deal plates of whole wood-roasted fish, pork collar with clams and the like in favor of sampling widely from the vegetables and salads that are done so well here. Roasted cauliflower gets an agro-dolce spin with golden raisins and tiny pine nuts, cut by a licoricey twinge of fresh tarragon.

And charred radicchio, the deep-red bitter green I learned to love in the Veneto, came with shaved bottarga (fish roe) cured in-house at Revival, its oceanic pull countered by a burst of lemon. Unforgettable stuff, crowned with translucent shards of parmesan and a gleaming white anchovy.

Even the rustic desserts fell neatly into place, from the free-form pastry crust of a wood-roasted pear crostata to a wedge of pleasantly gritty polenta cake livened with citrus segments, then softened with a puff of whipped cream and a thread of thyme-flavored honey.

The wood-clad room itself is warm and welcoming and casual, with an open kitchen and all its bustle. The staff is well-drilled on the menu, and Revival Market co-owner Morgan Weber prowls the floor like a proud father. The wine list by Jeb Stuart won’t be in effect until the liquor license comes through, so for the present it’s BYOB.

And despite the fact that Coltivare has jumped on the no-reservations bandwagon, you won’t necessarily have to languish for eons in a sidewalk or vestibule line. Weber and company promise that if you call once the doors open, they’ll put your name and phone number on a list right along with the folks who are physically present. When your name comes up, they’ll call you and give you five minutes to claim your table.

It’s somewhere between democratic and Darwinistic. And with food like this as the reward, I’m not too proud to show up at 5 p.m. and stand on the sidewalk.